


Plus Ça Change, Plus C'est La Même Chose

by scissorphishe



Category: Fake News RPF, Pundit RPF, Pundit RPF (US)
Genre: 2008 California Proposition 8 | California Marriage Protection Act, American Politics, Angst, M/M, Politics, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-02-16
Updated: 2009-02-16
Packaged: 2017-10-10 08:41:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,371
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/97781
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scissorphishe/pseuds/scissorphishe
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There are many mixed feelings in the wake of the 2008 presidential election.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Plus Ça Change, Plus C'est La Même Chose

**Author's Note:**

  * For [hiddenxplaces](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=hiddenxplaces).



> Prompt: Jon Stewart/Keith Olbermann (implied Anderson Cooper/Stephen Colbert). Jon is in love with Stephen and Keith with Anderson but Stephen and Anderson get together - somehow Jon and Keith end up comforting each other.
> 
> Also, a few relevant video clips (which most people have seen, but just in case):   
> Part of Jon's line about Obama winning: http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/tue-november-4-2008/indecision-2008--barack-obama-wins  
> The "an historic night" segment: http://www.thedailyshow.com/video/index.jhtml?videoId=209520&amp;title=indecision-2008-mccain  
> The "lying sack of shit" segment: http://www.thedailyshow.com/video/index.jhtml?videoId=184086&amp;title=sarah-palin-gender-card  
> And, for good measure, Keith's Special Comment on Prop. 8: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ChanTFSmqao

"My guest tonight! Anderson Cooper, the silver fox of CNN!"

Jon smiles at the familiar joke, already starting to feel better. It's been a long, stressful day, and he's ready for his down time watching Stephen's show. He always watches The Colbert Report, ostensibly because it's his duty as co-executive producer, but really because he loves it. He tells people that that's because it's a great show, and while he does think it's a great show, the truth is that he would watch it even if it, well, sucked. He doesn't think any show with Stephen on it could suck that bad, but if one somehow managed to, he would watch it anyway. Because it isn't just the show he loves. It's Stephen.

On the screen Stephen is all mock seriousness. "Mr. Cooper," he intones (and Jon can't help but smile already at Stephen's silliness, at the way Anderson, too, is already grinning at the absurdity of being addressed so formally by a friend). "In the campaign lately we've been hearing a lot about the elite liberal media. Tell me, sir – just how elite is _your_ liberal media? We know CNN is so elite that its fox is made of silver (Silver Fox, as I said, that's you) – is Wolf Blitzer a _golden wolf_? Is Campbell Brown really Campbell _Crown_?" He fixes Anderson with a stern eyebrow. Jon's seen it a million times before, but he still loves that eyebrow.

Anderson laughs, looking surprised and happy. "Uh, no, actually –"

"Is John King _a real king??_" Stephen interrupts, and then, without waiting for a reply, "I knew it! CNN is plotting to overthrow our country's American democracy and replace it with a liberal elitist monarchy! I've blown _your sexy silver cover_, Anderson Elitist Cooper!"

Anderson starts laughing, unending giggles of surprised, delighted mirth. Jon, watching, starts laughing out loud, there alone in his office. Stephen is so amazing at this, he can always make Jon laugh, and because Jon knows this, he expects it – and yet Stephen still gets him every time, and Stephen's amazingness still awes Jon every time, and Jon is still, every time, just as tickled as Anderson obviously is. Anderson is still laughing, and, unbeknownst to him, Jon is still laughing with him, and then Jon sees something that shocks him.

Which is: Stephen starts laughing too. Not just a momentary smile or a quick chuckle, but a sudden huge sputter as he collapses and presses his face to the desk, and then raises his head again, meets Anderson's eyes, and bursts into joyful, helpless peals of laughter. Stephen grabs onto Anderson's arm and Anderson grabs Stephen's, and they both just sit there clutching each other across the desk, laughing and laughing and laughing. The audience whoops and whistles and laughs too. But Jon sits there no longer laughing. Stephen laughed. Stephen completely cracked up and broke down, whatever you want to call it, while trying to make someone else laugh, and Jon has never, ever seen him do that except when the someone else in question is Jon. Jon may be self-deprecating, but one thing he is unabashedly proud of is the fact that he is the only one who can make Stephen crack himself up. It's selfish, maybe, but it's special, and it's his. At least, he always thought it was.

And creeping into Jon's shock is something unpleasant, something that makes him look at a still-happily-laughing Anderson with a slightly less fond eye. _What is this?_ Jon thinks. _What am I doing? Am I really so selfish and stupid and stuck-up that I'm_ jealous?

He looks again at the screen, where Stephen and Anderson are finally starting to calm down. Jon looks at the way they're smiling at each other, the hand Stephen still has on Anderson's wrist and the way Anderson is still touching Stephen, and he thinks, _Shit._

He's not just jealous of Anderson. He is fucking in love with Stephen.

He is startled then by Stephen's voice coming again from the TV. "Watch Anderson Cooper's election coverage on AC360, live at 10 PM on CNN!"

The camera cuts away from Anderson then, and Jon heaves himself up from the couch to go back to his desk. He's got an election to cover and material to write. As he dives back into his work, he wishes that this thing would end and end well already, and that he can figure out what to do about this revelation he's just had about Stephen.

***

"I would just like to say, if I may...that at 11 o'clock at night, Eastern Standard Time, the president of the United States is Barack Obama."

That is the moment. In the minutes and hours that follow – the eruption of cheers from the audience and from the country, the tears that Jon is most definitely _not_ crying, the bright giddy haze of disbelief and ridiculousness and joy in which they finish the show, the heady flash of the coverage they all watch together after the audience is gone – that is the moment Jon keeps coming back to, because – because it confuses him utterly. He wants to say, _Because that was the moment when everything changed_, but he can't quite bring himself to do so. If there's one thing he's learned from this job, it's that he, or someone, will always be able to do it. He has an enduring faith in the unchangeability of things, in the universality, infinity, and constancy of malignancy, hypocrisy, and just plain stupidity in all things political.

And yet he cannot ignore the sweeping rush and dazzle of what has just happened. He cannot shake the feeling of standing on the edge of the bridge to the sky, of surging forward on the crest of the wave of history, caught up among millions of his fellow citizens, of his fellow human beings. He's standing there (because they're all too hyped-up to sit still) with his colleagues and his best friend all clustered in around the television screen, laughing and hugging and drinking and watching. With Stephen's arm slung around his shoulders and the president-elect's speech playing on the screen, Jon feels brave and renewed and reckless enough to put aside his deep and abiding cynicism for just this little while, and believe, if not wholeheartedly, then at least three-quarters-heartedly, that change has, in fact, come to America.

And while he's at it, he dares also to hope that the man with the warm arm around his shoulders will someday know how much Jon loves him, and will love him in return.

***

The next night he goes out to dinner with Stephen, Keith, and Anderson. Nothing too fancy – they enjoy doing this from time to time, and tonight is a chance for them to catch up with each other after the long, exhausting election cycle. They originally conceived of this particular dinner as a bit of a celebration, too. Jon likes to think he has come to his senses enough to remember the mixed blessings of this election, not to mention the still-here staggering world problems, but in truth he's still riding pretty high off it all.

The others seem to be, too. He arrives at the restaurant a little late and sees Stephen and Anderson already seated; they certainly sound happy as he approaches, and when he gets to their table they look up at him and offer warm greetings and practically radiant smiles.

He notices they're sitting on the same side, which is odd. Usually the fake news boys sit facing the real news boys, as Stephen likes to say, and Jon is just fine with that. Dinner is always exciting for him that way. He realizes now that he always spends these dinners unconsciously both trying and not trying to keep his and Stephen's feet and hands from brushing. Jon tells himself he's virtuous and never actually wanted that to happen, but he's always found himself on Stephen's right, and he knows, now, that that isn't coincidence. Covert (if subconscious) flirting is just too damn easy for lefties; Jon can only hope the others never noticed. (Unless, of course, he wants Stephen to have noticed, which is another one of those mind games that he never satisfactorily solves.)

He slides into the booth across from Stephen and Anderson, easily sliding into the preliminaries of conversation at the same time. "Hey, Stephen, whassup. Anderson, good to see you again, how you doin'?" They move into their old, known patterns, happy with their drinks and their familiar conversation, tonight tinged with a dash of the unfamiliar, the lasting glow of excitement from last night's revelry.

"Hey, there's Keith!" Jon says suddenly, spotting him coming through the door. He looks intense and vaguely troubled, but then he usually does. Keith doesn't often appear pleased – always something to complain about – and while Jon knows there has been plenty to be outraged over during the last eight years, he wonders what Keith is going to complain about tonight, on the heels of the historic (_an_ historic, he thinks, smiling) and landslide victory of Keith's favorite candidate.

Keith soon arrives at their table, where he's met with plenty of cheer, even if he apparently doesn't see fit to show any himself.

"Hi there!" Stephen beams up at him, and Anderson looks equally delighted when he says, "Hey, Keith!"

"Keith, lovely to see you again," Jon offers.

"Fuckers," says Keith.

"Thanks, man...you too," Jon teases. Stephen gives a loud, exaggerated sigh and says in his "Stephen" voice, "What is it this time? You liberal media..." and Anderson laughs affectionately. "Yeah, what's wrong, Keith? You're not at least glad Obama won?"

"Those _fuckers_ passed Prop. 8," Keith says, louder.

Immediately they soften into understanding. So that's what this is about. "Oh man, I know!" Jon says, perhaps getting just a little worked up, himself. "It's like, we make this huge step forward as a society, and the same fucking night they're like, Whoops, no, social progress, uh – only for black people! If you're two dudes who wanna marry each other, society's just not ready for that, it's too – _subversive_ or..._something_."

"And I feel so bad for all those people who got married in the last, what, five months, and now are being told they might have to get un-married," says Stephen, dropping the "Stephen" voice. "Not to mention all the people who were planning a marriage that now can't happen, and all the other people who will sometime want to get married but won't be able to..."

"–Anderson?" Jon prompts after a moment. Anderson has a habit of participating in a conversation by watching and listening and only speaking when there's a clear silence – because he's reserved by nature, and, no doubt, because his profession has made this conversational pattern a habit. Jon knows Stephen always tries to bring Anderson into the conversation, and Jon tries to help out, though sometimes it's hard to remember there are other people when Stephen is speaking.

Anderson looks startled. "Oh, sorry...I guess I'm in the habit of not discussing my own opinion. Just supposed to ask everyone else and listen to their opinions, ask questions without giving away my preference, you know the drill..."

"Oh, yeah," says Jon. "I keep forgetting the" – he half-grins at Stephen – "real news boys don't get to do that. 'Cause, you know, on _our_ shows it's all, like, 'Fuck that douchebag. That guy's a...'"

"Lying sack of shit," Stephen supplies, smiling.

"Oh, you saw that, Dick Morris, yeah," Jon says happily. He likes knowing that Stephen watches his show, just like he watches Stephen's. Of course Stephen always says he watches, but Jon still loves hearing the evidence.

"Anyway," he says, turning back to Anderson. "Now's the time. You're free! Tell us all your thoughts on Prop. 8. (Not like we couldn't guess, but.) Is it – is it a lying sack of shit? –That doesn't even make sense."

Anderson smiles crookedly, sadly. "I'm gonna go with 'yes' on that one, actually," he says, and sighs. "I just – to be kind of self-centered here, I keep thinking of it in terms of us. I know it was only for California, but I keep thinking, if it were me – if I'd married Stephen, and then a bunch of strangers took that away, I'd be – well, to use some unprofessional language, I'd be...really pissed."

Jon and Stephen's influence must have really rubbed off on Anderson, Jon thinks, because even he's doing the gay jokes now.

As if to confirm this, Stephen laughs aloud. "Anderson!" he says, sounding as surprised and delighted as Anderson's laughter sounded on the Report. "Anderson," says Stephen again, "I'm so proud of you! I thought you weren't ready to tell them yet – "

Oh, Stephen, thinks Jon, filled with love. Anderson is kidding, and Stephen, trained by years of improv, is gamely playing along. Now Stephen will say something outrageous and make them all laugh at the ridiculousness of what Anderson said.

Stephen turns to look them. "Jon? Keith? There's something Anderson and I would like to tell you. We're together, and – who knows? – we might get married sometime."

"In Massachusetts or Connecticut," Anderson adds. "Right now we're just enjoying being together, but...we think this will last a long time."

Jon gives a sort of strangled laugh. This joke isn't quite so funny anymore. "Or...you could move to South Africa," he manages. His own joke really isn't very funny either, but he can't think of anything better.

Stephen looks closely at him. "Jon? Uh, you know, we aren't kidding about this. I know it's a surprise, but we really are together."

Oh.

Jon is numb, shocked, speechless, afraid to believe it, about to break down – because he knows now, really, that it is true. He isn't quite all there, he's floating above his seat, he's falling down a deep wide dark abyss, he's hit the bottom in a daze and a clarity of anguish. He's about to fall apart into a million tiny shards, his mind crying _Stephenstephenstephenstephenstephenstephenstephen_.

And then he breathes again, pulls himself together, and, with a herculean effort, beams at Stephen and Anderson. He forces his voice out past his raw too-tight throat and says, with something actually passable for sincerity, "Wow, uh – congratulations, you guys! I – you're right, Stephen, I'm surprised, but that's just – that's great! I'm – so happy for you both."

He hears Keith next to him start to shower them with similarly effusive congratulations, and so he sinks down into his mind and tries to lick his wounds a little, as best he can while maintaining at least a contented façade. He cannot help tears springing hot and stinging to his eyes, but he looks away and down at his lap and blinks them away and then raises his head to beam again at Anderson and Stephen, and offer another round of the very best, happiest-sounding congratulations he can possibly muster, and pretend that any tears Stephen and Anderson might have seen are tears of purest joy.

It's damned hard to do. It's one of the hardest things he's ever done, especially for an actor of Jon's caliber – fourth male lead in _Death to Smoochy_ – but it is also one of the most vitally important.

Because Stephen can never know. In the whirl of his still-reeling mind, this is the one thought that distills with perfect clarity: Stephen can never, ever know. Jon must never allow him to know. Because it would kill him, it would _kill_ Stephen to know that Jon loves him in a way that Stephen can never love him back, that every single moment Stephen spends happy with Anderson is a knife in Jon's heart, that his happiness comes at the expense of Jon's, that he is hurting his best friend, his colleague, the guy who he thinks made him a success, to whom he feels he owes everything, whom he loves but only – only – as a friend. Stephen made himself a success, of course, but he attributes far too much of it to Jon. That is, in fact, what it comes down to: Stephen is far, far too good and compassionate and noble and generous of spirit to be able to handle knowing. That is why Jon loves him. And because he loves him, he has to protect him, shield him from the anguish of Stephen's own empathy and Jon's pain. This pain Jon will bear alone.

Jon thinks again of that moment when he announced the next President of the United States. He remembers his confusion between reasoned, ingrained cynicism and irresistible optimism, and eventually being swept up in the crowds of the hopeful. He remembers the warmth of Stephen's arm around him, and then the way Stephen smiled when he looked at Anderson, the way Anderson beamed at Stephen after Stephen sent him into a gale of giggles, and he thinks, _Well, that hope didn't last long._

***

Stephen's office is cold. Cold and empty. Jon doesn't really know what he's doing, sitting here all alone in the dark in someone else's office. After that dinner, he just wanted to be alone. If he can't have Stephen, he'll take solitude instead. So he came to the little room Stephen inhabits every day, where they've sat and talked and written and eaten and laughed together. And now that he's here, he's still lonely (maybe lonelier than ever) and he's certainly colder and he doesn't know what to do.

He sits there still, on the edge of Stephen's desk. The window behind him holds city lights behind its silent glass; he can see a faint glow in front of him on the opposite wall. Mostly it's dark, though. He wants it that way. All the better to ignore the surroundings that hold thoughts of Stephen in every one of its familiar details.

His vaguely wandering fingers brush something soft. He grabs hold of it, pulls it to him: it's an overcoat, lying neatly folded on Stephen's desk. Probably black, though he can't really tell in the dark. It doesn't look like Stephen's, but it's just sitting here like he is, and he's shivering, so he pulls it on.

It's a little tight across the front when he tries to button it. He gets caught up in negotiating the hardest buttonhole at his waistline, when there's a soft noise and movement in the doorway.

He looks up, hands still full of button and buttonhole. It's Keith.

Keith moves forward into the room. Jon still can't see him very well – he's a shadow-shape, darkness in motion, in monochromatic flesh and blood, weight and thought and breath. He is a human hidden in the dark and the shadows and the fragments of dim light; he is something Jon must, at this moment, take on faith. He could be anyone, almost anything – a monster, an illusion, a bear, Stephen – so Jon has only his belief that this breathing bundle of rustling and steps is real, and human, and Keith.

Keith moves closer, his form of shifting shadows and darkness growing larger in Jon's vision. Jon looks at the black shape of Keith's head, and then the brief relief map of Keith's face when he moves into a patch of faint light. He hears the heavy grace of Keith's almost noiseless footsteps drawing ever nearer. Keith stops in front of him, uncommonly close. It's closer than Jon would probably like under normal circumstances, but right now he can hardly even see Keith, and besides, in this cold, lonely room, a nearby human presence isn't a bad thing to have. Jon vaguely thinks he feels a little warmed, as if he and Keith have created a cocoon of warmth emanating from their closeness.

Distant light from the window falls thinly across Keith's face, and Jon gets his first good look at it since dinner. And even in his sorry state, Jon is roused by the intensity and mysteriousness of what he sees now in Keith's body language.

He's seen Keith displeased before – annoyed when an assistant screws up something important, stressed when his show isn't running right, frustrated when he can't get an interview he wants, and of course coldly outraged over innumerable political events, mostly Bush and Cheney and the rest of the neocons fucking up the country, or so Keith sees it. (Jon tries to refrain from pointing out the stupid shit that comes from the rest of the ideological spectrum and the media. He figures Keith can watch Jon's show if he wants, and if he doesn't want, Jon can just enjoy his company when they get together.)

Jon's even seen Keith quite happy, in his own way, talking to Rachel or his niece and nephew, announcing Obama's victory; or pleasantly, comfortably cranky while out with Jon and Stephen and Anderson. (Jon's not sure about when Keith talks with Anderson; at those times Keith seems brighter, somehow, less thundercloud gloom and fury – but Jon can't tell sometimes if it's the brightness of happiness or of pain.)

But what Keith is now – is certainly isn't happiness, but it isn't exactly anger. Not in the same way. Not loud and righteous and eloquent like his usual anger, the kind that's so popular on TV; and not trivial, short-lived annoyance like everyone feels at times. Jon thinks there's anger under the surface, but deep and helpless and raw and muted, and sunk deep under something else. Keith looks – what is it? – morose; and that's when Jon realizes that what's smothering the anger is pain. Not the pain of moral outrage but the pain of – Jon isn't sure, is thinking in puzzled, probing fits and starts, but it seems familiar to him, with its troubled eyes and set of the mouth.

It occurs to Jon, not for the first time, that Keith, as he usually is, is not unlike Stephen in character: loud and angry and partisan, even if Keith's political views are really mostly the same as Jon's own. But there are differences, of course, and the main one that Jon did not know until now is that when Stephen's character is sad, he breaks down pathetically like a spoiled child. Whereas when Keith is suffering as he clearly is now, he just goes quiet and, again, morose. It's a sobering sight, Keith Olbermann saddened into silence and submission.

Keith reaches out and softly fingers Jon's overcoat collar. He rubs it slowly, back and forth, for a moment, and then cranes his face closer to it, as if trying to see it better. It suddenly occurs to Jon that maybe the coat belongs to Keith. He can't think why it would be in Stephen's office, but Keith seems to be acting like he recognizes it.

But just then Keith takes one more step closer, until he and Jon are nearly touching, and bends his head down until his face is almost in Jon's shoulder, his nose touching the coat. He inhales deeply. Jon hears the small rush of air right by his ear. Then Keith breathes out in a whisper into Jon's shoulder, "Anderson."

Keith raises his head. "Smells like Anderson."

Suddenly Jon remembers Anderson's interview on The Colbert Report. Guests often forget things in the Report's green room, and then Stephen keeps the things in his office until an intern can return them to their owners. Anderson must have forgotten his coat here the day of the interview. And Keith must have an amazing nose to have identified it by smell.

Jon clears his throat. Keith is still standing inordinately close. "Yeah, uh, I think Anderson forgot it here when he came on the show the other day. I guess the new intern didn't get around to getting it back to Anderson yet."

Keith pulls back slightly and stares. "You look like him in it," he says, in a low voice that Jon almost doesn't hear.

Jon isn't sure where this is leading, but it's hard for him to care much, to expend energy trying to figure it out when there is still an aching emptiness in the pit of his stomach and an aching emptiness in his chest around the aching fullness of his heart. His next words come unbidden, automatically, the half-smile, the small painful chuckle, the trace of irony that inevitably accompanies almost everything he says, even the darkest things. If he could crack jokes after his city was attacked and his world turned upside-down, then he can crack jokes now, after learning that the newly-discovered love of his life will, in fact, never be his.

"Wow," Jon says. "If you think I look like Anderson in this, then love really is blind, 'cause that guy's, like, a fucking _model_." He doesn't mean anything by it, is only falling back on one of his standard comedic tropes, the Gay Joke. But it's met with a tight silence, and then a short hard breath that sounds like pain. And Jon catches sight of Keith's tight-set mouth, his eyes dark with pain, and suddenly understands everything – Keith's oddness around Anderson, his uncanny recognition of Anderson's smell, and the inexplicable pain Jon sensed before and recognized but could not have said why. Now he knows: that pain was the same as Jon's own, and Keith is in love with Anderson just as much as Jon is with Stephen.

"Oh," says Jon finally. "I – I'm sorry, I didn't realize..."

Keith nods abrupt forgiveness. "It's okay. I know you understand, since you feel the same about Stephen."

"You knew," says Jon, slightly stunned. "I guess – I – Was I really that obvious?"

"No – well – not really. I could tell because I knew what that feeling looked like; I saw myself in you. But I'm sure Stephen doesn't know, if you're worried. He was too caught up in – " Keith swallows – "Anderson – to scrutinize either of us."

Jon is silent, trying to digest all the new information. Keith – nearsighted, bespectacled Keith – saw all of this when Jon looked only at his own lap and at Stephen. He looks at Keith again, and Keith raises his face slightly so that the light from the window catches and glints on his glasses.

"You look like him in those glasses," Jon says, as softly as Keith did when he said Jon looked like Anderson. At the thought of Stephen a hot wave of longing surges through him, and suddenly his pants feel as achingly full as his heart. He reaches up and fingers the earpiece of Keith's glasses, rubs his fingers along it slowly, back and forth, feeling the softness of Keith's hair and the warmth of Keith's skin, alternating, back and forth. He's always wanted to do this to Stephen, it seems, although, like so many other things, he never really consciously realized it until very recently.

Keith has his head bent down again, but this time he pushes his face right into Jon's shoulder, as if trying to bury himself in the scent. "Anderson," he mumbles against Jon's shoulder, and Jon hears Keith's longing, feels it swell hot and hard against Jon's hip.

Keith shifts slightly so that his erection is pressed into Jon's own, and then, achingly slowly, arches against Jon. Jon's breath catches. Keith moves slowly, slowly, into a rhythm, silent and tense with suppressed longing as he arches (pause), arches (pause), arches against Jon.

He doesn't know why Keith is doing this, knows only that in his pants he is aching almost as much as in his chest, that one ache is of sex and can be soothed by sexual means, even means less than first choice; but the other ache is of love and only one person can fix that one, and that person isn't Keith. That person is somewhere else with someone else, probably doing something ostensibly similar but actually deeply different, because there's no one else he'd rather be doing it with, and the same cannot be said for Jon or Keith.

But Jon's mind is still shell-shocked and lovesick and, now, lust-hazed, and it seems to him that if he can't satisfy both of the longings in him, he might as well satisfy the only one he can. And so when Keith presses against him again, Jon allows himself to slowly, hesitatingly press back.

It feels as if the warmth of Keith's body is focused into that one spot, compaction of intense heat, breathtaking heat, rubbing slowly as Jon rubs Keith's earpiece, back. And forth. And back., as the heat grows. It's smoldering between them now, and Jon's breath gasps and stutters not quite in time, because Stephen's the musical one, not him. And at this last thought of Stephen he lets himself go completely, pushing against Keith harder and harder, feeling Keith respond and move faster in return, and all Jon's useless love and crushed hopes and burning want and need with nowhere else to go turn here, to focus into this one act of simplicity, fundamental and primitive as any animal need, the hunger, the thirst, the wanting and the never, ever having. Keith plunges himself into the act as if dedicating himself to the last best task on earth, whatever it is. His face presses further and further into Jon's shoulder, pulling in breaths of Anderson's scent as much as he possibly can, though his breath is now as ragged as Jon's. Jon knows Keith is trying to envision Anderson there instead, and he takes no offense because his own eyes are closed against the almost-dark as he hangs onto Keith's glasses as if for dear life, still rubbing back and forth, faster and faster as he and Keith move faster together, hard against the desk behind him. Jon grips the earpiece and wishes with all his soul that it were Stephen's, imagines that it is, that it is Stephen thrusting hot and frantic against him, matching Jon's burning fierce impossible...

Jon hears Keith's breathing heighten and intensify, feels the dire, unbearable heat between them, and gives a final great heaving desperate breath that might be a sob as the wave of their mutually exclusive desire crests and crashes over them. His hand clenches and Keith's glasses crack in his fingers. But Keith doesn't notice, is buried deep in Jon's shoulder, flooding it with a stream of whispers. Jon only makes out _andersonandersonanderson_, and believes it because to the broken pieces of glasses that he finds himself holding, he is whispering hot and close _stephenstephenstephen, oh, stephen_, because he has opened his eyes and found that of course it is not Stephen there with him after all; it is Keith, as it was all along, and he's just as broken and lost and anguished as Jon is.

Keith looks at him then, and whispers, "I really thought this election would change everything. I thought it would make me so happy. I just didn't count on falling in love – "

And Jon whispers back, "I know. Me too. I know."

Jon knows Keith loves to quote things, is always putting some pretentious-sounding quote or other into his Special Comments and such. There have been quotes from literature, from anonymous sources, from murder trials, even. But none has ever seemed so fitting as the one Keith offers now.

"Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose."

Jon miraculously remembers enough high school French to understand; or maybe he would have understood anyway, just because it is so fitting. The more things change, the more they stay the same.

He swallows. "Yeah," he says, and takes off Anderson's coat, folds it tenderly back onto Stephen's desk, and follows Keith out of the room, closing the door behind them.

***

Some weeks later Jon watches the inauguration of the first African-American president of the United States. He watches alone; he knows Stephen is watching with the channel turned to CNN so that he can see Anderson. Jon cries a little, at last; and then he starts cutting up video clips and finding nearly the same lines in George Bush's speech, because this is what Jon does, always and forever, alone and together, in sickness and in health, for better or for worse.

Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.


End file.
